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Rian Buot

Ms.Gardner

English 10H/Period 4

31 October 2017

Digital Letter on Racial Discrimination

Dear the youth of the of the 21st century, the students of high school today, and the young adults

of tomorrow :

I speak to you not as an immigrant --though immigrant I am--not as a person of color--though

person of color I am indeed--but as an individual striving for equality. Fair treatment for those who have

surpassed many obstacles just to be in the promised land that is America. Sanctuary for those who have

lost too much and seek a better future for themselves and their families. This is America. This is the

American dream. This is the American ideology; freedom, liberty, and equality for all.

Yet there are those who seek to disrupt this common ideology. These will be the people who

perform racial discrimination, a rising phenomenon where one is treated unfairly based on their color,

race, or culture. An example of racial discrimination is the segregation acts in the nineteenth century,

slavery in the 1700s, and even the Trail of Tears in 1830. This phenomenon can affect the latinos in the

street slums, and the blacks in their modest shacks, and the asians in their suburban homes, and even the

whites in their countryside mansions. As an immigrant myself, I have had first hand experience with

racial discrimination and can personally say how degrading such a treatment feels. Personally, being

judged and mistreated because of my background were daggers to my conscience. To help combat this

major issue I speak to you. The younger generation. The generation that hasn’t been tainted by the views

of the current generation. The generation that can ignite a change in society’s discriminatory and

destructive ways. I simply speak to inform you of how minorities are being treated and how we can stop

such vulgar actions against them. Immigrants are pioneers who come for a future in America and ought

to be given that right without racist actions opposing them.

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According to Marianne Bertrand, professor of social and labor economics at the University of

Chicago,racial discrimination affects the U.S. nationally because nearly 15% of the U.S population are

international migrants and 14.4% of those migrants have reported being discriminated based on their race.

They have been discriminated in their workplace, in school, and even in public settings such as

department stores. An example of racism, Bertrand notes, is when people of color mail in resumes to

employers, despite all their qualifications, they are 50% less likely to receive a call back due to minor

differences with a resume from a white applicant. Employers typically reject applicants with exoctic, non

tradionational white names such as Dante, or Priyanka, or Shreyas opposed to more common American

names such as David, Amber, or Blake. Is it right for someone to be denied the right to a job interview

based on their name? Applicants should be given equal right to a job based on their qualifications and not

what they call themselves by. Employers ought to overlook such irrelevant details and focus on the

worker's ability to do their job.

Susan N.Herman, president of the ACLU Organization, states that within the workplace itself

minorities are 28.9% more likely to be harassed. Herman retells a story in South Dakota where an Asian

employee reported a harassment case in March where she was being badgered by her coworkers. The

young woman said her co workers kept bowing to her as a greeting and kept making fun of her squinty

eyes. This serves to show how racism can be associated with certain features of a race and can be

exploited by others. Racial features shouldn’t be used as an excuse to badger an individual. These features

are part of who they are and should be appreciated by others.

From poverty to luxury is often the goal which immigrants attempt to obtain through coming to

America. They seek pleasures that they’ve never experienced before by coming here. For most of them,

driving a car or living under a roof is a necessity that wasn’t available to them in their home country. Yet

according to Sendhil Mullainathan, editor of the New York Times Economic Review column, in the U.S.

people of color are 35.2% more likely to be charged at least $700 more than whites when purchasing a

vehicle. The Federal Department of Housing and Urban Development claim that immigrants are shown

17.7% less homes than whites on the premises that realtors don’t believe they can afford such properties.
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As a result, foreigners live in poorer living conditions than whites and actually pay more money to

maintain that lifestyle. Newcomers from outside the U.S. ought to be given equal opportunities as

naturalized U.S. citizens. Relators and car dealers should sell their products at the same price for

everyone, immigrant or not. Isn’t this what the first revolution was for? Equal treatment for all?

It seems now that the revolutionary war was fought in vain seeing how equal treatment isn’t

being presented to newcomers.When doing normal daily routines, such as driving in your car, or shopping

at a grocery store, or riding you bike, blacks and latinos specifically are targeted by the police and store

owners.The ACLU reports that latinos and blacks alone are pulled over by the police twice as much as

whites. What’s even more disturbing is the fact that minorities, especially blacks and Latinos, are 4 times

more probable to be arrested, which results in them being incarcerated at 6 times the rate of whites. In the

year 2016 alone, over 700,000 minorities were incarcerated. In department stores, foreigners are 80%

more probable to be followed by a clerk or be treated unfairly due to their appearance. Americans

shouldn’t be suspicious of people of color because they’re different. Police should only pull over those

who actually appear threatening while driving. Store workers should only stalk customers who pose a

legitimate concern.

Many may be opposed to the idea of treating immigrants equally. Some believe they aren’t

“Americans,” that these foreigners are stealing jobs from “ Americans.” Yet, they fail to realize how

beneficial minority groups are to the U.S.. They fail to consider the harsh difficulties many had to endure

to get here. They fail to recognize the difficulties these migrants are continuing to face daily. Racial

discrimination, in result, affects the daily lives of foreigners. All Americans, especially you, the younger

generation, should convey equality to people of color and not mistreat them based on where they came

from. Stand up against racists who say people like me aren’t welcome here. Stand up to store clerks who

mistreat an international customer. Stand up to the politicians who portray certain races as terrorists to the

American people. And so , generation of tomorrow: Ask not how terrible immigrants are to you--ask

how terrible you are to immigrants.

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Sincerely,

Rian Buot, a proud American immigrant from beautiful islands of

Philippines. Salamut.

Work Cited

Yang, Jerry “Racial/Color Discrimination.” Edited by Jerry R. Yang,U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity

Commission,2 Sept. 2015, www.eeoc.gov/laws/types/race_color.cfm.

Queally, James. "Police Manuals Under Scrutiny on Immigration." Los Angeles Times, 13 Apr, 2017, pp.

A.1, SIRS Issues Researcher, https://sks.sirs.com.

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Mullainathan, Sendhil. “Racial Bias, Even When We Have Good Intentions.” The New York Times, The

New York Times, 3 Jan. 2015, www.nytimes.com/2015/01/04/upshot/the-measuring-sticks-of-racial-bias-

.html.